UNCLE VANYA by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Annie Baker

A review in The New York Times describes the playwright’s process of translating Uncle Vanya as a revelation “to discover that the Russian text is riddled with ellipses, sentence fragments, and filler — words like ‘tak’ and ‘nu,’ rough equivalents of ‘um’ and ‘er.’” Taking on the classic play of a bourgeois Russian family trapped by the banalities of their unbearable existences, Annie Baker sought to create “a version that sounds to our contemporary American ears the way the play sounded to Russian ears” during the original production. Thwarted love, failing estate, and gun still apply. Baker is an Obie Award-winning playwright who received an MFA in 2009 from the Playwriting program at Brooklyn College. In 2017, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the “Genius Grant.”